3 Must Know GDN Campaign Setting Hacks

I was going to title this page “Campaign Settings Optimization” but that seemed way to boring even for an geek like me.

In all seriousness these are three ‘must know’ things for GDN. Each can save you a boat load of cash. I’ve seen too many campaigns set up without these three things being considered. For most, forgetting them leads to ultra poor ROI. While you may not implement all three based upon the audience you want to target you should at least know about them.

At the end of this guide I’m going to ask you for at least 1 favor. Keep in mind I do marketing for a living so that 1 favor might turn into 2 or 3 😉

I recommend watching the prior GDN campaign setup video first if you have never setup a GDN campaign before. Things might make a little more sense.

Here is a video as well in case you don’t want to read the written guide. All I ask, is after you watch the video you scroll down to the bottom of this post and read the favor I’m asking

3 Must Know GDN Campaign Setting Hacks Video

Hack 1: Location Settings

Maybe these aren’t exactly hacks but because Adwords seems to hide the Advanced location settings at the bottom and not right under where you select a Location for your campaign I consider it one.

When setting up a campaign on Adwords you choose your location. What you don’t see is that by default, WAY at the bottom of the page, there is Locations Options (Advanced).

Newer Adwords users glide right over this. To make things even stranger. When you go into the campaign settings after you create a campaign the placement of this option is changed to right under the location settings. Where it probably should of been in the first place

When you click the edit button you are shown 3 options. By default “People in, or who show interest in my targeted location (recommended)” is selected. This means even if you select let’s say United States for targeting your ad could be showing to people in Germany. Even if you do not ship to Germany. The same happens if you just select the city you operate in. Your ad can potentially be showing to anyone out there who might be looking at a page that Google deems an “interest”.

I have been inside dozens of accounts with hundreds of dollars spent in Egypt and Pakistan where the client had zero intention of marketing. I’ve yelled at Google about this before but as of yet that have not introduced a better way of doing things.

The fix however is easy. If you just want to show your ad to people in the location you setup then select “People in my targeted location”. Now only people inside the geographic area set will see your ads. This works the same on GDN as it does on search.

Hack 2: Stopping Mobile Traffic

Mobile traffic can be absolutely fantastic for some businesses. If you are a service based business like a lawn mowing company or a Lock Smith you definitely want to give mobile a shot. I even recommend eCommerce stores try out the mobile inventory as it can convert and cheaper than desktop and tablet traffic.

However…. In many cases companies may not want mobile. If you run an eCommerce store and found mobile traffic to just not convert well for you it would be nice to be able to exclude it right?

When I setup a campaign I generally want as few targeting variables as possible. I want as much bang for buck and for most industries I just don’t want to accept mobile traffic off the bat. I want to first optimize my campaign and then slowly turn on mobile traffic to see if I can get profitable with it. That is only after I have first tried getting profitable on Desktop.

Luckily there is a technique to do this.

Under the Campaign Settings tab there is a sub tab called Devices

Inside this tab you will see Mobile devices with full browsers and the column bid adj.

click on the dash – in the Bid adj. column. Now select Decrease from the drop down menu and enter in the number 100

Hit the Save button and you have just disabled mobile traffic for the campaign. You can always go in at a later date and change the setting to a positive or negative number. Once I have a campaign that is working for me I will often bid at a decrease of 70% and slowly move the bidding amount up to normal depending upon the results I get.

Hack 3: Kill off App Traffic

I don’t think there is anything most eCommerce marketers hate more then App traffic. It seriously sucks for most industries. People who are inside apps are rarely ever going to purchase a product shown. The only exception I come across is re-marketing or lead gen. It’s fine traffic if you are promoting another app but if you are promoting products and services it will drain the hell out of your budget and really fast.

Don’t worry however because we have your back Jack.

The video does a great job walking you through the setting but I will try to type it out as well.

Inside targeting Scroll down to Campaign exclusions and select Placements

Now type in adsenseformobileapps.com and select Add Placements

Now select Save and your ads will no longer show inside Apps. This is important because even if you exclude mobile traffic you will still have tablet traffic. With tablet traffic there will be a ton of apps that can quickly zap your daily budget.

Hack 4: Location bid Adjust

I said 3 must know hacks. I like to over deliver so I’m adding in another quick hack that can be used in a few different ways.

Inside your campaign settings tab you have a sub Tab called Locations

When you are targeting multiple locations you can go inside this tab and bid adjust on locations. This is great if you have a single campaign that includes multiple states or countries that are producing different results sales wise. You modify the same way you did when excluding mobile traffic.

Another way to use this setting is when you are not getting any traffic for your campaign because your CPC is too low. You can try doubling your normal cost per click then go into this setting and bid adj by 50%. Some might see an increase in traffic volumes and others won’t nice a thing. It’s something that can be tried with very mixed results.

Now My Favor

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